Mercedes SL’s beauty all on the inside — really

DanNeil

Mercedes-Benz USA

God knows I love a lost cause, so let me try to defend the new Mercedes-Benz SL550’s styling.

First off, for about half the time, it is dark outside. You couldn’t see the car even if you wanted to. Yes, you’re asleep most of the time it is dark, but is that the car’s fault? I submit the answer is no.

Second, you are a philistine. You’re the kind of person who likes Aston Martins and Jaguars. But those cars are so…well, obvious, as in obviously beautiful. With the sixth-generation SL—which will come to the U.S. as the SL550, powered by a twin-turbo, 4.7-liter, 435-horsepower V8 and costing $106,375 to start—beauty runs profoundly deep. Next week James Cameron is taking his submarine to see it.

Nighttime is this car’s friend.

Third, what you’re looking at is an example of what Umberto Eco called a “closed” text: While it cannot be denied that the SL is a sweet hot mess up front, the styling is so deliberately and even joyously overdrawn (I count no fewer than 17 strakes, fins, light lines and creases from the hood center to the rear quarter panel) that it demands to be taken solely on its own terms, closed to interpretation or critique. The sheer ridiculousness of it defies dissent.

Fourth, I blame Obama. Well, not really Obama but the Department of Transportation. Well, not really DOT but the European Union’s pedestrian-safety regulations, the effect of which has been to derange European cars’ front-end styling with overlarge, flat-faced grilles (the better to distribute impact load) and high hood lines, which create a cushioning space above the hard points of the engine.

No car company’s styling has suffered from these regs more than Mercedes-Benz. The SL grille, which hosts a large and splendid Mercedes-Benz star, and the headlight instruments are fixed in two planes in such a way that they never quite cohere in profile. Between the significant front overhang—nearly 39 inches—and all the Z-axis, the SL looks, to use a technical term, schnozzy.

The SL’s front end is similar to that of the smaller SLK, and that, too, posed a problem with down-the-road graphics. In other words, how to distinguish visually the larger and pricier car from its cousin? The solution to the DRG problem was the SL’s distinctively huge and squarish headlight assemblies. Alas. The right-angled inner corners of these headlamps—a physician would call them the medial canthi—make the SL look more than a little cross-eyed. And yet, the headlamps almost work stylistically: Note the sinuous LED light bars that connect the fender contours to the shoulder lines with glowing filaments. Again, nighttime is this car’s friend.

You may also perceive, if you look closely, a big butt. Several factors oblige the SL to have a large booty, not the least of which is the retractable glass hardtop with optional Magic Sky Control, which sounds like a brand of hallucinogenic but is actually an electro-chromatic system that allows the roof to change from nearly transparent to opaque at the touch of a button. Cool.

This magnesium-framed roof takes up a fair amount of real estate when stowed. The designers also had to make room in the trunk for at least one golf bag, or two with the top up.

More important, the new SL is built with a lightweight aluminum monocoque and body shell. The new car weighs an astonishing 275 pounds less than the previous car (about 3,900 pounds), even though it is 2 inches longer, 2.2 inches wider and utterly packed with new safety systems and electronic amenities. The new SL550 is also almost a second quicker to 60 mph than the previous car (4.5 seconds, as compared with 5.3 seconds) and gets a whopping 22% better fuel economy. The SL’s lightweight chassis exhibits 20% higher torsional rigidity than the previous car’s and includes the largest cast-aluminum component ever attempted in a production car. From the driver’s seat, the SL feels as solidly built as a missile silo.

The downside of aluminum construction, however, is that the material generally needs larger sectional dimensions in order to carry the same loads as steel. And thus the fluffy badonkadonk.

I’ve saved my best defense for last: Mercedes-Benz has always been known for its amazing engineering; the aesthetically challenged SL only sharpens that reputation. This is a car that—just incidentally and by way of aside—revolutionizes the windshield wiper. The adaptive windscreen wipe/wash system sprays wiper fluid directly onto the windscreen from the wiper blade itself, and it works beautifully, too. The SL also deploys the new Harman/Kardon Frontbass audio system, in which the woofers are built into the front bulkhead, actually in the car’s foot wells. The hi-fi is well nigh amazing, regardless of whether the top is up or down. Combined with the wind management around the open cockpit (including an electrically operable wind blocker behind the seats); the optional Airscarf feature (blowing warmed air across the occupants’ necks from nozzles built into the headrest); and the climate-controlled seats, the SL is absolutely the most comfortable, most weatherable, no-downside convertible on the planet. You have to love that.

During the press introduction in southern Spain in March, I drove an SL500—for branding reasons, the car is known as SL500 in Europe and SL550 in the States—and, let me say now, by any other name, this car is a torque monster: 516 pound-feet of torque comes fully online at a mere 1,800 rpm. If you have the car in Sport mode, the SL is capable of respectable and nicely edgy sporting violence. Paddle-shifting the automatic transmission as you enter the corner, you’ll hear the engine automatically rev to match the selected gear ratio—blipping, it is called—and the SL just rips along in a way no luxurious grand touring car has a right to. Yes, it does have an electrically assisted rack-and-pinion steering, and no, the steering isn’t the telepathic rudder that the Porsche 911’s is, but still, it is pretty awesome. MB’s Active Body Control suspension system is standard on the SL550, and the degree to which ABC negates body pitch, roll and squat is almost eerie. She’s big, she’s kind of a morning-after mess, but she sure is light and fast.

Out on the highway, with the switches set to “C”—for “controlled efficiency,” if you can believe it—the car is a spectacular flume ride down Mount Glycerin. Like the chassis, the suspension components have been revised, in lightweight aluminum, reducing ride harshness and improving roadholding. Aluminum, being less dense than steel, has greater sound radiation, and yet the alloy-bodied SL summons a lush, refined quiet in the cabin to rival a fixed-roof car.

The stitched-leather cabin appointments are wonderful and the seats couldn’t be any more comfortable. Mercedes has transferred much of the hefty, serious switchgear from the SLS into the SL to good effect. There is one huge glitch in the cabin, however: The left-central air vent is situated asymmetrically in the dash, crowded to the right by the instrument binnacle. This is the sort of put-it-where-it-fits one might expect of a Mosler Consulier.

I didn’t get a lot of kilometers in before it was time to bring the car back, so I’m looking forward to another go at it. Fast, elegant, swimming in technical comforts and refinements, the SL is a world-class piece of machinery. It would be nice if the outside reflected the soulful beauties inside. Oh well. There’s always night.

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